Chapter 15
Pages 160-161
She made the pastry dough and thought she ought to tell Ella and John to stop on by because
three pies, maybe four, were too much to keep for one’s own. Sethe thought they might as well back it
up with a couple of chickens. Stamp allowed that perch and catfish were jumping into the boat—didn’t
even have to drop a line.
From Denver’s two thrilled eyes it grew into a feast for ninety people. 124 shook with their
voices far into the night. Ninety people who ate so well, and laughed so much, it made them angry. They
woke up the next morning and remembered the meal-fried perch that Stamp Paid handled with a
hickory twig, holding his left palm out against the spit and pop of the boiling grease; the corn pudding
made with cream; tired, overfed children asleep in the grass, tiny bones of roasted rabbit still in their
hands—and got angry.
Baby Suggs’ three (maybe four) pies grew to ten (maybe twelve). Sethe’s two hens became five
turkeys. The one block of ice brought all the way from Cincinnati—over which they poured mashed
watermelon mixed with sugar and mint to make a punch—became a wagonload of ice cakes for a
washtub full of strawberry shrug. 124, rocking with laughter, goodwill and food for ninety, made them
angry. Too much, they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always
the center of things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing
messages; healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing
and loving everybody like it was her job and hers alone.
Now to take two buckets of blackberries and make ten, maybe twelve piece; to have turkey
enough for the whole town pretty near, new peas in September, fresh cream but no cow, ice and sugar,
batter bread, bread pudding, raised bread, shortbread—it made them mad. Loaves and fishes were His
powers—they did not belong to an ex-slave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the
scale, or picked okra with a baby on her back…
It made them furious. They swallowed baking soda, the morning after, to calm the stomach
violence caused by the bounty, the reckless generosity on display at 124. Whispered to each other in the
yards about fat rats, doom and uncalled-for pride.
Chapter 16
Pages 175-176
Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim. The
three (now four—because she’d had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies they had hoped were
alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet
Home desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in sawdust; a third pumped blood down
the dress of the main one—the woman schoolteacher bragged about, the one he said made fine ink,
damn good soup, pressed his collars the way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left. But
now she’d gone wild, due to the mishandling of the nephew who’d overbeat her and made her cut and
run. Schoolteacher had chastised that nephew, telling him think—just think—what would his own horse
do if you beat it beyond the point of education. Or Chipper, or Samson. Suppose you beat the hounds
past that point thataway. Never again could you trust them in the woods or anywhere else. You’d be
feeding them maybe, holding out a piece of rabbit in your hand, and the animal would revert—bite your
hand clean off. So he punished that nephew by not letting him come on the hunt. Made him stay there,
feed stock, feed himself, feed Lillian, tend crops. See how he liked it; see what happened when you
overbeat creatures God had given you the responsibility of—the trouble it was, and the loss. The whole
lot was lost now. Five. He could claim the baby struggling in the arms of the mewing old man, but who’d
tend her? Because the woman—something was wrong with her. She was looking at him now, and if his
other nephew could see that look he would learn the lesson for sure: you just can’t mishandle creatures
and expect success.
Chapter 16
Page 179
“It’s time to nurse your youngest,” she said.
Sethe reached up for the baby without letting the dead one go.
Baby Suggs shook her head. “One at a time,” she said and traded the living for the dead, which
she carried into the keeping room. When she came back, Sethe was aiming a bloody nipple into the
baby’s mouth. Baby Suggs slammed her fist on the table and shouted, “Clean up! Clean yourself up!”
They fought then. Like rivals over the heart of the loved, they fought. Each struggling for the
nursing child. Baby Suggs lost when she slipped in a red puddle and fell. So Denver took her mother’s
milk right along with the blood of her sister. And that’s the way they were when the sheriff returned,
having commandeered a neighbor’s cart, and ordered Stamp to drive it.
Outside a throng now, of black faces stopped murmuring. Holding the living child, Sethe walked
past them in their silence and hers. She climbed into the cart, her profile knife-clean against a cherry
blue sky. A profile that shocked them with its clarity. Was her head a bit too high? Her back a little too
straight? Probably. Otherwise the singing would have begun at once, the moment she appeared in the
doorway of the house on Bluestone Road. Some cape of sound would have quickly been wrapped
around her, like arms to hold and steady on her way. As it was, they waited till the cart turned about,
headed west to town. And then no words. Humming. No words at all.
Chapter 17
Page 183
Paul D slid the clipping out from under Stamp’s palm. The print meant nothing to him so he
didn’t even glance at it. He simply looked at the face, shaking his head no. No. At the mouth, you see.
And no at whatever it was those black scratches said, and no to whatever it was Stamp Paid wanted him
to know. Because there was no way in hell a black face could appear in a newspaper if the story was
about something anybody wanted to hear. A whip of fear broke through the heart chambers as soon as
you saw a Negro’s face in a paper since the face was not there because the person had a healthy baby,
or outran a street mob. Nor was it there because the person had been killed, or maimed or caught or
burned or jailed or whipped or evicted or stomped or raped or cheated, since that could hardly qualify
as news in a newspaper. It would have to be something out of the ordinary—something whitepeople
would find interesting, truly different, worth a few minutes or teeth sucking if not gasps. And it must
have been hard to find news about Negros worth the breath catch of a white citizen of Cincinnati.
So who was this woman with a mouth that was not Sethe’s, but whose eyes were almost as
calm as hers? Whose head was turned on her neck in the manner he loved so well it watered his eye to
see it.
And he said so. “This ain’t her mouth. I know her mouth and this ain’t it.” Before Stamp Paid
could speak he said it and even while he spoke Paul D said it again. Oh, he heard all the old man was
saying, but the more he heard, the stranger the lips in the drawing became.
Chapter 18
Pages 192-193
“What you did was wrong, Sethe.”
“I should have gone on back there? Taken my babies back there?”
“There could have been a way. Some other way.”
“What way?”
“You got two feet, Sethe, not four,” he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them;
trackless and quiet.
Later he would wonder what made him say it. The calves of his youth? or the conviction that he
was being observed through the ceiling? How fast he had moved from his shame to hers. From his coldhouse secret straight to her too-thick love.
Meanwhile the forest was locking the distance between them, giving it shape and heft.
He did not put his hat on right away. First he fingered it, deciding how his going would be, how
to make it an exit not an escape. And it was very important not to leave without looking. He stood up,
turned and looked up the white stairs. She was there all right. Standing straight as a line with her back to
him. He didn’t rush to the door. He moved slowly, and when he got there he opened it before asking
Sethe to put support aside for him because he might be a little late getting back. Only then did he put on
his hat.
Sweet, she thought. He must think I can’t bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him
after telling me how many feet I have, “goodbye” would break me to pieces. Ain’t that sweet.
“So long,” she murmured from the far side of the trees.